After dealing with the historical events starring Perkin Warbeck/Richard of York and analyzing the sources that dealt with the fate of the Princes of the Tower of London, the last entry in this series It is dedicated to another of the aspects that must be analyzed in relation to the matter:the behavior of the main characters of the plot.
- Richard III
We can only start with the last Plantagenet. He is, not without reason, the main suspect in what happened to the princes, since he had the motives, the means and the opportunity. The young people were in his custody, they could pose a threat to him and his reign (especially Edward V) and after 1485 there is no reliable news of what happened to them. On the other hand, however, we must first remember what has already been mentioned in other linked entries:that the cold-blooded murder of the two sons of his beloved older brother does not square with his previous acts, in which his loyalty in at all times to his brother and father of the princes, Eduardo IV; that once proclaimed his nephews as illegitimate by Parliament, through a rule known as Titulus Regius , and having won the crown, they were no longer a great threat to him, or at least no greater threat than a dozen other members of the House of York whose lives not only respected Richard III, but also sought his well-being. Q>
But there is an added reflection that Matthew Lewis makes in this regard and that seems interesting and significant to me:if Richard III obtained profit from the death of the princes, this derived from the elimination of the threat that Eduardo V especially could pose as a hook pennant for those dissatisfied with Ricardo's government. But for Edward V to stop posing this threat, it wasn't enough for Richard to kill the princes, he NEEDED his death to be known. It only prevented his nephews from being used against him if there were no nephews to fight for. However, Ricardo at no time made public a death that would have prevented him from a serious problem.
It can be argued that the king did not want to cause discomfort or even a rebellion of his subjects in the event that he reported that they had died and that the opinion of that he had murdered them. Beyond the fact that the doubt about the causes of the death of Eduardo V but with the certainty that he had died was a risk that could probably be allowed and that would be in any case less than that of a living pretender to the throne, the truth is that Ricardo was presented with an unbeatable opportunity to load the dead (never better said) to another.
In October 1483 Richard has to face an attempt to depose him from the throne and place Henry Tudor in his place. The plot, which is known as the Buckingham Rebellion because its head leader was Henry Stafford (Duke of Buckingham), fails. It is known by that name, but it seems that it was a plan clearly orchestrated by Henry Tudor and his mother Margaret Beaufort. Richard accused Buckingham of being a vile traitor. It has been suggested that the reason for the duke's arrest and subsequent conviction was that he had orchestrated the deaths of the princes (because he believed he was doing Richard's will or paved Henry Tudor's way to the throne), but it seems that the king only he lamented the betrayal of his best friend.
In any case, and for the purposes that interest us here, Buckingham was sentenced to death and executed. Richard's silence at that time about the princes is very significant. If they had been dead by then (whoever was responsible) it would have been a piece of cake to get rid of suspicion by accusing Buckingham of the crime and Henry Tudor of being the instigator (it wouldn't have been too difficult to get a confession and a couple of bodies). That he did not do so may suggest that they were alive at the time.
But there is another aspect that Lewis does not mention but that seems significant to me. We have seen that before Richard's death in 1485 there were already rumors that the princes had died and even the propaganda of Henry Tudor's invasion hinted at it. Ricardo, who doubtless knew of these rumours, could easily have put an end to them by displaying the young men alive. By not doing so he fueled suspicion and made things easier for his rivals. Unless, of course, it was impossible for him to show the princes. And the only reason he couldn't do it is that there were no princes to show, meaning they were dead.
- Margaret Beaufort and Henry Tudor
Early 1483, Edward still alive IV, Margaret Beaufort saw that her son Henry Tudor had a chance. But the negotiations with Edward IV to return from exile and marry one of his daughters (probably not Elizabeth) did not come to fruition due to the king's death.
After Richard III's accession to the throne, despite the fact that Margaret was married to the all-powerful Lord Stanley and held a privileged place in Richard III's court (he paraded after the queen Anne Neville at her coronation) began to pave the way for the return and accession of Henry Tudor. Margaret Beaufort tried from the beginning of Richard III's reign to lure Edward IV's widow, Elizabeth Woodville, to her side. Her agreed plan with Woodville to marry Henry now to Elizabeth of York only made sense if Woodville believed the princes were dead.
Woodville received in his sanctuary in Westminster the visit of Dr. Lewis Caerleon, also a physician to Margaret Beaufort. This must have been the link between the two. How did Elizabeth Woodville know that her children were dead if it seemed that no one else was sure? If the same rumor in the Crowland Chronicle came to her (possibly via Caerleon) she must have been predisposed to believe it (Ricardo had executed his brother Anthony Rivers and his son from his first marriage Richard Grey, though both were grown men and were killed). put on trial, it was not about two children murdered in cold blood and also his nephews).
But, as Matthew Lewis points out, to rally Woodville to her cause, Margaret Beaufort did not need the princes to be dead, nor did she need to kill them, or know what had become of they; she just needed Elizabeth to believe that they had died. And she was willing to do so given her background, so she quickly jumped on a bandwagon that allowed her to regain her preponderant role as mother of the new queen. It is even possible that Woodville was led to believe (she was isolated in Westminster) that the plan was to reinstate Edward V to the throne and that the wedding between Henry Tudor and Elizabeth of York was the price for adding the Beaufort-Lancasters (and your money) and the Stanleys (and their troops) to the plan.
As for Henry Tudor, those who point to him as guilty point out that when he took possession of the Crown after the battle of Bosworth he made Parliament pass a law suspending civil rights (Act of Attainder) considering Richard and his followers at Bosworth to be traitors, in which he accused his predecessor of cruelty and tyranny. However, the princes of the Tower are never mentioned in this statement. For his detractors it is inconceivable that a crime as execrable as the death of two children, nephews in addition to his alleged murderer, was not included in this proclamation. In fact, the only reasonable explanation for them is that at that time the princes were still safe and sound in the Tower and that their disappearance was subsequent to the death of Richard III.
The second aspect they highlight derives from the answer to the key question of any murder:Who benefited from the crime? Richard III had passed the Titulus Regius and his brother's children had been declared illegitimate. Cut off from the line of succession, the princes no longer posed any threat to Richard. Henry VII, for his part, had become engaged to the princes' sister, Elizabeth of York, in an attempt to legitimize his accession to the throne. Therefore, he repealed the Titulus Regius so that Isabel returned to figure in the line of succession to the throne. But in that case, so would her brothers, the princes of the Tower, who as males (and if they were alive) preceded her sister in the line of succession. Evidently, the "Ricardists" point out, Henry VII had a very powerful motive to cause the disappearance of his brothers-in-law.
Henry VII's absolute silence on the fate of the princes is also striking, even after threats from Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck. If someone threatened his throne by claiming to be one of the princes of the Tower, the best way to stop the support that the pretender was getting was to convincingly show the world that he was an impostor by showing proof that the princes were dead. That he did not do so could be motivated because he himself was implicated in his disappearance, although it cannot be lost sight of that Henry's wife, Elizabeth, was the sister of the young men and the Tudor and she seemed to be sincerely in love, from what he could wanting to avoid a reality that would cause him pain.
- European royalty
We have already narrated in previous posts as Perkin Warbeck he was supported in his claims by different European leaders such as the kings of France and Scotland or the emperor Maximilian. Matthew Lewis argues that it would have been impossible for a young Flemish son of a merchant to have been able to deceive so many members of the European nobility about a false identity, especially that he managed in such a short time to master English in a way that would make him spend as a native in front of their interlocutors. This argument stumbles for me on a basic error:to suppose that Warbeck would not have been supported by these kings and emperors if they knew that he was an impostor. I believe that the kings of France and Scotland (traditional enemies of England) would not have cared if the young man was or was not who he claimed to be, if they could harm the hated England. A different case is that of Maximiliano. It is true that his wife was the Duchess of Burgundy and that the former holder of the title, Margaret, sister of Richard III and sworn enemy of Henry Tudor, resided there. But I doubt that Margaret's influence on Maximilian was strong enough to account for the Emperor's continued support of Warbeck up to the last moment. I'll come back to that later.
Matthew Lewis also questions whether a 15th-century crowned head, imbued with the divine character of monarchies, committed the sacrilege of knowingly trying to elevate an impostor commoner to the royal dignity, not even if it thus put a rival kingdom in check. Here again I disagree with Lewis; I believe that the European monarchs of the late fifteenth century were much less scrupulous and more pragmatic than he points out and that the gift horse of a suitor who contributed to his position on the international chessboard, they would not look the tooth of his plebeian origin or no.
- The secret code of the Catholic Monarchs
Matthew Lewis points out a curious and little-known fact that in his opinion it could point to the suitor Warbeck being who he claimed to be and not an impostor. Some time ago a copy of the book appeared that contained the codes of the encrypted messages that the Catholic Monarchs exchanged with their ambassadors. In this book, only European royalty figures appeared and they did so with their real names, since it was a book intended not to be read by the public, but only by the kings and their most prominent servants. The code DCCCCCVII, which was identified with Ricardo, Duke of York, second son of Eduardo IV, coincides with the one used in official reports to report the adventures of Perkin Warbeck. He again disagreed with Lewis about the importance of this curious piece of information as revealing that the Spanish kings knew that the pretender was who he claimed to be. Although it is true that in said document they did not have to be secretive, it does not seem to me that their objective was other than to give a name to a protagonist of the moment, without even considering whether or not he was who he claimed to be (a fact that, on the other hand, , possibly the kings did not know for sure either).
I do not want to conclude this entry without transcribing a text that seems very relevant to me. I have already commented before that Emperor Maximilian was surely the strongest and most loyal supporter of the pretender Perkin Warbeck. He did not have the same component of ancestral hatred of England as the kings of France and Scotland and his support was constant and sincere at all times. Well, the document that I transcribe below shows that at least Maximilian considered until the end and in good faith that the suitor was the true son of Edward IV. Written in November 1497, that is to say after Warbeck's arrest and confession of his imposture (that is, when the emperor no longer had any political interest in continuing to defend the young man whose career had come to an end), it is addressed to his son Philip the Handsome and it goes like this:
Dear son, It has come to our attention that our dearly beloved cousin the Duke of York has just been taken prisoner and handed over to the King of England, his enemy and we fear very much that, for reasons that you know more than well, he decides to kill him. And because we hold the aforesaid Duke of York in high esteem and profess our love for him because he is our equal and our ally, we are bitterly grieved at his sad fate and disgrace and would be all the more grieved at his death and feel bound and bound in defense. It is our honor and conscience to help and comfort you with all our might.
He then gave the following instructions to his ambassador to deal directly with Henry VII and tell him that "although he insists and maintains that our aforesaid cousin and Duke of York is a fraud and not the son of the late King Edward IV, yet all Christendom is convinced that he is, and will continue to be, the son of Eduardo IV and that for that reason, if he kills him, he will be killing his own brother-in-law, which will constitute shame, dishonor and will be reproached forever even by his own people, because he (the Duke ) won't be able to cause you any more trouble, dead or alive."
With this moving text I end a series of posts in which I have not tried to give an answer to the enigma of Perkin Warbeck and the princes of the Tower of London, but rather to study deepens all aspects of the mystery so that readers can learn about them and, if they wish, draw their own conclusions. I will be happy to receive any comments or opinions about it, either on the blog itself, or on the rest of my social networks.
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